There's No Place In Our Language For This Kind Of Talk

June 4, 1985|By Diane Hubbard Burns of the Sentinel Staff

For some people, the English language is a ticker tape of the mind in which thoughts issue forth ad infinitum, unedited and ill-expressed. For others, words are the threads of a verbal screen constructed to obscure the truth.

But for a few, the language is a precision tool for communicating, and defending it against misuse is a galvanizing cause. William D. Lutz and his 35 fellow members of the Committee on Public Doublespeak view the careless and conniving use of English as a call to arms.

Pens poised, they stand ready to right the wrongs inflicted by individual bureaucrats and government agencies, military leaders, industry spokesmen, and even (gasp!) presidents. At the very least, they hope to embarrass the worst offenders by bestowing an annual ''Doublespeak Award.''

Recent examples cited by the committee might make one worry that we're closing in on George Orwell's nightmarish concept of doublethink, in which even our own thoughts will contradict themselves. To wit:

The committee's 1984 award went to the State Department, in part for its assertion (notice the careful anonymity of the speaker in many doublespeak examples) that Grenadians held captive after the United States occupied their island were not under arrest. They were, said the State Department, being ''detained.''

But the example that clinched last year's Doublespeak Award for the State Department was the communique ruling out the use of the word ''killing'' in the department's reports on human rights in foreign countries. Instead, the department said it would substitute the phrase ''unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life.''

''This language is used to cover up or hide or put the best face on things, so that it's not a tax increase, it's 'revenue enhancement,' '' said Lutz, an associate professor of English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

He cited a couple of his personal favorites: A Philadelphia hospital that has no elevator operators, only ''members of the vertical transportation corps''; and a report by the New Jersey crime control commission that never mentioned the word ''Mafia'' but referred instead to ''members of a career offender cartel.''

''One of my favorites in medicine is 'negative patient care outcome.' That's when people die,'' Lutz said. ''And of course it gives us the famous American saying: Nothing in life is certain except negative patient care outcome and revenue enhancement.''

While many of these euphemisms seem merely humorous, Lutz -- who is on sabbatical from Rutgers editing a new Webster's thesaurus and a collection of essays on the state of language -- worries about their cumulative effect.

''When peolpe hear these transparent phrases, they do one of two things --either laugh or turn their minds off. When politicians use this language to talk about things of importance to all of us, we tend to turn off and think it's all empty language. That, in a democracy, is very dangerous.''

Oh, yes. The Doublespeak Committee also pays tribute to unheralded knights in this semantic battle with its annual Orwell Award. Last year's recipient was ABC Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel, for his dedicated debunking of doublespeakers.